Wrestling with God.
Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak...then he said unto Jacob, "Let me go for it is daybreak." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me"... (The angel said)"you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed."
Sometimes God requires us to wrestle with Him to get the blessing that we desperately need. Consider that Jacob was driven by his desperation. This is important for us to notice as he already had assurances in the past from God that He was going to return him safely home. Nevertheless, we find Jacob wrestling here to get an assurance of God's blessing.
There are times where we need to allow our desperation to seek God. We can feel the restriction that God has placed upon us. Why the barrier, the limit, or the hardship? We can get that sense that God is neutral--neither for us nor against, but "Where is He?" It is in that time where we must allow our desperation to drive us into seeking Him. We must have His presence so we will cling to Him until we get it. It is such a time where He might be calling us into deeper level of submission and consecration.
Many resort to other things such as their own material things, relationships, or activities. They will pacify themselves with these substitutes and so they will not get rewarded. They will not allow their desperation to drive them to seek the Lord. So, they content themselves to live without His blessings or power upon their lives. They are not content, but they get used to going without.
Like Jacob, God by His grace gives a vision or taste of Himself of His activity in our lives. The angels ascending and descending the ladder in Jacob's vision indicates their assignments from Heaven over Jacob's life. God had by His Grace elected to set His activity over Jacob's life. Therefore, Jacob commits to the Lord, and we see that over the years the Lord had protected Jacob's interests and blessed Him in spite of Jacob's conniving Uncle Laban. Jacob was well aware of God's hand of blessing upon his life. So, we see that God pursued Jacob, but it was in this moment Jacob's turn to pursue God. Jacob was blessed as a result.
There are a few examples in the scriptures of those that had been blessed but failed to pursue God and so missed out and were actually rejected. Do you remember King Saul? In 1 Samuel 11 King Saul had been infused with the presence and power of God in his life in a radical way. We also have the story in 1 Samuel 2 of the Eli the priest and his sons who were blessed to serve in God's service. In the New Testament we have the Church of Laodicea in Revelation 3. All of these cases are those who have been blessed and pursued by God and when it came time for them to pursue God they failed. Each case God had rejected them. All of these could have sought God and wrestled with Him to try to reverse the curse, but alas, they didn't. In contrast, do you remember Jonah and Ninevah. Ninevah was cursed and marked for destruction. When they found out they decided to fast and pray hoping that perhaps God would have mercy and change His mind. They had no promise or assurance that God would, but they decided to wrestle with it because they were desperate. God heard their prayer and changed His mind about destroying them.
So it is that when we sense God's hand is palm down upon us and His face is turned away that we need to all the more for His blessing. The worst thing that we can do is cope with it and settle ourselves with other things.
What do you have going on right now that you need to wrestle with God about?
